


Deepest Secrets

by LovelyLessie



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dwemer Ruins, Exploration, Gen, Skyrim Main Quest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLessie/pseuds/LovelyLessie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sent by Paarthurnax to find and retrieve an Elder Scroll, the Dragonborn travels to Winterhold and teams up with a number of allies to delve into the depths of Blackreach and bring it back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deepest Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> **Part One**
> 
> **Winter's Grasp**

 

First Seed is, for most of Tamriel, the beginning of spring. Even in Skyrim, the snow’s begun to melt by the middle of the month; the plains are turning green again, there are buds on the leaves of the birches, and by the sides of the road through the Rift and into Eastmarch, tiny spring flowers are sprouting through the mud.

It is not so in Winterhold.

The Pale in the depth of Evening Star, when they were there on Mercius’s Legion business - Aesa hates to think of it as her own business, however much she’s helped the Empire - was not so cold and stormy as Winterhold now. They haven’t traveled ten miles into the mountains before they find themselves fighting through snow falling so thickly that Aesa can hardly make out her hand in front of her face, and winds so strong and icy she has to duck her head in order to keep her eyes open.

“This is impossible,” she calls to Mercius over the sound of the storm. “We’re never going to get through this.”

“I told you this before we left Ivarstead,” he shouts back. “Winterhold is nearly unreachable now.”

“We can’t make it in this storm!” she says. “We’ll have to wait for this to let up - I can’t see my own boots as I’m walking.”

She looks back over her shoulder, squinting to make out his great silhouette behind her, and sees him shake his head. “It could be days before the snow settles,” he says. “We’d freeze to death waiting, even you with your thick skin. We’ve got to keep moving.”

“How far is it to Winterhold?” she asks, leaning forward against the wind as she tramps onwards.

“From here? Perhaps thirty miles,” he calls. “Perhaps farther. It’s hard to say without some landmark.”

“Thirty miles!” She stops again to look at him. “We’ve already been traveling for hours! We can’t make it that far today.”

“Of course we can’t,” he says snappishly. “We’ll need to rest for the night, which we’ll concern ourselves with when it’s time! Now, are you finished pointing out the obvious?”

Aesa turns away and hunches up her shoulders, trudging farther into the snow. Neither of them says much more after that.

 

 

* * *

  

They must have been traveling six hours before Mercius says, in his gruff way, “We should stop and rest.”

“Thank the Divines!” Aesa says, and throws herself down in the snow. “My feet have turned to ice, if how much I can feel them’s anything to go by.”

The storm has quieted, if not much, for the moment; the thick white fog still makes it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, but the snow at least has slowed and the wind dropped to a whine rather than a roar. Mercius, heedless of her pitiful state, steps around her and away from the road to find a sheltered crag in the cliffs. “Come here,” he calls. “We’d better make a fire if we’re going to stay for long.”

“I can do it!” she calls back, scrambling to her feet and wincing at the bite of snow between her fingers. “If there’s wood, I mean.”

“I’ve got it,” he says wearily, and swings his pack down from his shoulder to produce a bit of firewood. It’s not much, but enough to burn for now. “You have a flint?”

“I have better,” she replies cheerfully, stacking the wood in a little pile. “Stand back.”

“What are you…” Mercius asks slowly as he backs away from her fire pit.

She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, summons up the thought of light and heat, the feeling of smoky air in her chest, the glow of embers behind her eyelids. “ _Yol!”_ she cries, and feels the flames blossom in front of her face even before her eyes snap open to see them catch alight her little campfire.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” he says flatly, raising an eyebrow. “Stay and warm up. I’ll be back.”

“What?” she asks, frowning, but he’s already walking away into the fog, and a moment later, he’s gone.

She sits down beside the fire and huddles close to it, drawing her cloak around herself as tightly as she can. Even there, the cold seeps into her bones deeper than the fire can reach, but it’s better than nothing, at least. It’s better than nothing.

 

 

* * *

 

Mercius returns half an hour later with his armor all covered in snow, shivering and dragging behind him the gutted carcass of an elk. “Something to eat,” he says gruffly, and sits down across from her, pulling out his knife to carve it. “And there’s a couple bottles of mead in my pack, why don’t you get them out?”

Aesa nods and finds them among his things, passing one to him across the fire. “Thanks,” she says quietly as she wrestles the cork out of hers.

“Mm,” he replies, shaking his head. “Find something to spear the venison on, would you?”

“Use your sword,” she says. “Mine’s shorter.”

He makes a sound that she  _thinks_  might be a stifled laugh, and pulls it free of the sheath. “I suppose that will work,” he agrees, and carefully slides the venison cuts onto the blade to hold them in the flames.

“I’d have helped you hunt, you know,” she says after a few moments. “Or carry it back, at least.”

Mercius shrugs his shoulders. “You’d have been no use hunting in this fog, anyways,” he says. “Can’t trust your eyes alone to guide you in these conditions.”

She laughs at that, but she suspects what he’s really saying is  _I’m sorry for snapping._ She might call his bluff, of course, but she decides against it. She understands anyways, and she understands why well enough to leave him his pride.

 

 

 

* * *

 

They travel through the afternoon and well into the evening before they reach the cave.

It’s Aesa who spots it, during a lull in the storm - a dark crevasse yawning open in the stony face of the mountains. “Look, there!” she calls, gesturing at it, and Mercius turns.

“Good eye,” he says, and gives her a slightly rueful smile. “Let’s take a look inside and see what we can find; it might be safe shelter for the night.”

They leave the road and approach the cave mouth, where icicles grow down like massive fangs. Her boots crunch in the crisp snow around the entrance as she edges in, scanning the darkness for movement. “Get me a torch,” she says quietly, reaching back.

“I’ll look around,” Mercius says, ignoring her outstretched hand and keeping the torch for himself. It flickers to life with a spark, the slightly damp tip hissing and smoking, and he raises it, casting eerie shadows across the walls.

Aesa shuffles inside and drops her pack by the cavern wall. “Seems quiet enough,” she says, and bends down to take a loose stone from the floor. “Hey!” she shouts, throwing it overhand towards the far side of the cave so that it strikes something with a clatter that echoes from the walls.

“What in Oblivion are you doing?” Mercius asks, staring at her.

“Shh,” she says, and a moment later she hears it: a scratching, a clicking, something shuffling along farther inside. She pulls out her sword.

“Damn,” he hisses. “Here, take the torch -“

Before he has time to hand it over to her, there’s a horrible hissing sound and a spray of viscous black fluid arcs towards them. “Chaurus!” she shouts, leaping out of the way, and winces at how loudly her voice bounces back.

“The  _torch,_  Aesa!” Mercius roars, and drops it to the floor so he can draw his sword. He kicks it towards her and she stoops to grab it in her free hand, raising it as high as she can to reveal the black-shelled bug scurrying towards them. Mercius, a few feet away, raises his sword above his head and runs at it with a snarl, and she follows.

With two of them against only one chaurus, they make fairly short work of it, though not unscathed; by the time its legs stop twitching Mercius has venom sprayed all down one side, and Aesa is nursing an unpleasant gash from its pincers. She sits down with her back to the wall, cradling her arm to her chest, and digs clumsily in her bag with her left hand searching for a bottle of antivenom.

“Here,” Mercius says, kneeling in front of her, and offers her a bottle from his own pack. She drinks a few sips from it, gritting her teeth against the sting and burn in her throat, and lets him bind her arm with bandages.

“You’ve got it all over you,” she says. “Do you have any salve?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t think so,” he says. “The antivenom should be enough.”

“You could put that on the wounds, too,” she offers. “Have you got more?”

“Of course I have,” he says, but he doesn’t sound snappish, only tired. “Here - soak that rag in what’s left in your bottle, I’ll drink another.”

She soaks the rag and helps smear the antivenom over his face and arm where the poison hit him. His skin looks pale and bluish underneath, but that should heal on its own, she thinks. Besides, under the bandages and blood she’s sure her arm looks no better.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

She gives him a brave smile. “Sure I am,” she says. “Let’s make camp.”

“ _You_  sit down,” he says firmly, getting to his feet. “You got the worst of the injuries, you ought to rest.  _I’ll_  make camp.”

“Alright,” she agrees, “as long as you’ll let me take the first watch.

He smiles wearily and nods. “Aye,” he says, “I can do that.”


End file.
